Series 3 > Minutes of the justices of the peace for Lanarkshire, 1707-1723

INTRODUCTION xxiii
which he could not have done these five hundred
years.’1
At the Restoration all these excellent reforms lapsed :
the Cromwellian ordinances were rescinded and the Justices
went out of office. But in the Act of 1661 which was to
govern the office of Justice of the Peace for more than a
century the Legislature had merely re-enacted the Act of
1617, taking, in addition, parts of the Cromwellian ordi¬
nances. Justices were for the greater part of that century
employed as agents of the Privy Council for carrying out
their orders ; getting men for the Militia 2 ; signing orders
for the transportation of idle vagabonds in favour of ship¬
owners who, ‘ out of zeal for their country and the credit
of Scotsmen in the foreign plantations and by warrant of
Justices of the Peace, . . . have seized several vagabonds
and idle persons and shipped them off ’ 3; granting similar
authority to army recruiting officers for taking from the
tolbooths sturdy beggars and able unemployed for the wars
abroad.
The Highways and Bridges Act of 1669 4 had added to the
duties of the Justices by making them responsible for the
appointment of road overseers and for the good order of
roads and bridges within their shires. The neglect of these
duties led the Council to appoint overseers from among the
leading landowners,5 a change that yielded no better
results.6 The Council then appointed commissioners of
excise as Justices, and they, too, were disappointing.
The Covenanting troubles led to a further departure
from the normal duties of Justices of the Peace. The diffi¬
culties already experienced by the Council in getting suit¬
able men for the office of Justice of Peace were much greater
1 Burton's Pari. Diary, iv. 169, quoted by Firth.
2 R.P.C. (3rd Series), ii. passim.
3 Ibid. ii. 129, 202, 205, 358, 534.
1 A.P.S. vii. 574 (Act for Repairing Highways and Bridges).
* R.P.C. (3rd Series), iii. 160, 307, 358. * Ibid. iv. 27.